Official blog of Gurcharan Das. He is the author of India Grows at Night: A Liberal Case for a Strong State (Penguin 2012);The Difficulty of Being Good: On the Subtle Art of Dharma (2009),India Unbound (2000),a novel,A Fine Family (1990),a book of essays The Elephant Paradigm (2002) & an anthology of plays,Three plays (2003). He writes a regular column for the Times of India and 5 Indian language papers and occasional pieces for the Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, and Time magazine.

Sunday, January 08, 2012

The mistake is to think that the current paralysis in decision making in Delhi is limited to politicians. Gutless bureaucrats, risk averse at the best of times, have done as much damage. India’s economy has sound fundamentals and is today one of the world’s strongest, but its confidence has been badly shaken by a weak state that cannot enforce its own laws, let alone enact its legislative agenda. Partly to blame is the Anna Hazare movement which has led to contempt for state institutions. Around the world,the Left wants a large state and the Right wants a small one, but what India needs is a liberal but strong statethat will, at least, implement its own laws.

The other mistake is to believe that the Indian state has weakened in the past two decades as a result of coalition politics. Truth is that India has always had a weak state and its history is a story of political disunity and warring kingdoms. Even our strongest empires were far weaker than say, the Qin Dynasty in China which built the Great Wall to keep out invaders. (That those invaders ended up in India in a chain reaction is another story.) The historian, Chris Bayly, describes how early European travellers to India were struck by the energy, colour and sophistication of the bazaar compared to the decadence of its rulers.Although historically weak,at Independence India inherited strong,robustinstitutions of the state—a professional police,bureaucracy, and judiciary. These are now in decay and the gap between ideals and reality has grown. It should not take seven years to build a road that takes two elsewhere; neither should it take 19 years to get justice; nor 23 years to build a dam.Poor governance and its cousin, corruption, are symptoms of a weak and soft state.

However, India has historically had a strong society, which prevented tyranny by the state. An Indian was defined by his village, caste and family, not by the state (as in China). The law—dharma--also emerged from society, not the state, and was later codified inDharmashastras. But that old society is now changing. As Adam Smith predicted inThe Wealth of Nations,the growth of markets would lead to a division of labour and new social groups would emerge. Open access to markets and job mobility would undermine traditional social authority, replacing it with more flexible, voluntary groups. Two decades of high growth is doing that and Anna’s movement reflects how it. The country is evolving from a traditional to a modern civil society. This is a positive thing for a modern democracy needs a vigorous civil society to keep it honest.

The past twenty years of capitalist growthhave made India one oftheworld’sfastest growingeconomies. The contrast between a successful private economy and a weak, public order has led to the impression that India might be able to manage without a strong state. But markets do not work in a vacuum. They need a network of regulations andregulators to enforce them.In the past two decades good regulators have definitelycontributed to India’s economic success.The telecom revolution was partly ushered byits firstregulator(TRAI)under JusticeS. S.Sodhiand B.K. Zutshi, who were strong enough towithstand pressures from the Telecom Department, which wanted to weakenprivate mobile companies. Stock exchanges have been strengthened bySEBI, the capital market regulator.The Reserve Bank’s oversight of bankinghas improvedand matured.The insurance and pension regulators have alsoearned their spurs. On the other hand, power regulators in the centre and the states are mostly spineless, self-serving, retired babus, who have failed to implement Electricity Act 2003, and prevented a power revolution in India.

A ‘strong state’ usually carries a bad odour, conjuring up authoritarian images of Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia. A ‘liberal, strong state’ is, however, not oppressive. It is efficient, enabling and tough against law-breakers. It punishes the corrupt swiftly. But it also protects liberties and dissent and enjoys legitimacy among the governed. A strong civil society is needed to hold such a state accountable. More than ever, Indians today need to make a liberal case for such a strong state.

About Me

Gurcharan Das has recently published a new book, India Grows at Night: A liberal case for a strong state (Penguin 2012). He is also general editor for a 15 volume series, The Story of Indian Business (Penguin) of which three volumes have already appeared.
He is the author of The Difficulty of Being Good: On the subtle art of dharma (Penguin 2009) which interrogates the epic, Mahabharata, in order to answer the question, ‘why be good?’ His international bestseller, India Unbound, is a narrative account of India from Independence to the global information age, and has been published in 17 languages and filmed by BBC. He writes regular column for several news papers and periodic guest columns for the Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Foreign Affairs, and Newsweek. Gurcharan Das graduated with honors from Harvard University in Philosophy, Politics and Sanskrit. He later attended Harvard Business School. He was CEO of Procter & Gamble India and later Managing Director, Procter & Gamble Worldwide (Strategic Planning). In 1995, he took early retirement to become a full time writer.
Visit http://gurcharandas.org for his complete work and profile.